by RJ Bailey
The feeling of worthlessness I knew so well had just started to creep up from my abdomen when my phone pinged. WhatsApp.
New phone, said the message. It was Freddie.
You OK? I replied.
Yup. Never better. No, wait, that’s a fucking lie.
At home?
Yes, sitting watching something called MasterCunt. It’s a cookery show.
How’s the leg?
Itchy. And sore. And I have a boot on the ankle for the Achilles. I have crutches now. Wrist is better, though.
Wish you were here.
Me too, partner. How is it going? Kassie divorced yet?
Honeymoon on Lombok and Gili Islands. We’ll see. All went OK at wedding. I have my suspicions about her. I’ll tell you when I see you. What’s next for you?
Physiotherapy.
Sounds exciting.
I might have to ring some of my old playmates. Horny as hell.
Even in an Achilles boot?
Especially in an Achilles boot. Getting anywhere?
I have a lead. Some slimeball called Dieter who owns a bar. I suspect he was a business partner of Matt’s.
Be careful. We know what kind of business partner Matt liked.
Of course.
Let me know how it goes. Any time, day or night, this shop’s always open.
I will x.
I looked at the screen for half a minute, wondering if there would be a comeback. None came. Communicating halfway around the world is impressive, but it always left me with a gnawing, empty feeling, like something was fraudulent or unsatisfying.
The black cloud again.
I texted Kadek to come and pick me up. I’d go for a walk before the Blue Turtle. Fresh air and daylight would help keep the darkness at bay.
TWENTY
At five past six, I was walking along the beach, past the gaudy fishing boats pulled up to the treeline for the night, and the glowing grills of the fish shacks. The sun was falling and the breeze from the sea was cutting through the residual heat. Several kids were flying kites on the wind, slowly reeling them out in a series of swoops, higher and higher into the sky. A few of the massage women were still in place and looked at me with hope, holding up bottles of coconut oil and offering me a discounted happy-hour price. A handsome young man sitting at one of the stations suggested, using sign language, I might like to indulge in another kind of happy hour. I gave another polite decline. I had heard that many women came to Bali for more than batik, and that the beach boys were willing to provide that kind of service.
I took my Birkenstocks off and let the warm sand squeeze through my toes. From beneath thatched roofs, boys and girls beckoned for me to come and try their food, and waved bottles of Bintang at me. Music seeped across the beach, not yet thumping as it would later in the evening. Bob Marley was popular and one bar was painted in full Rasta colours. Screens in some places showed Australian sports and hand-drawn signs proclaimed Fosters and Tooheys for sale.
‘Gintonic,’ one young lady shouted at me, and giggled as she performed a few fancy finger moves from a legong dance for my benefit. I smiled and shook my head. Some other time. ‘Sarong?’ she shouted after me.
Busy yellow-headed weaver birds flitted among the coconut palms and tamarind trees, singing and servicing their intricate nests. Behind them, the sky seemed enormous.
In that moment, it was easy to fall into the cliché about Bali being a paradise. But the volcano was apparently grumbling again and beneath all the ritual and symbolism, I knew the island had a tortured history, including mass suicides when the Dutch invaded – their own version of the Cambodian Killing Fields of the 1970s – and, more recently, lava flows and jihadi bombs. They also have a propensity to execute drug mules by firing squad. And I was here to begin my search for my missing daughter, kidnapped by my feckless ex.
You have to take the term paradise with a pinch of salt.
I didn’t have to search for the Blue Turtle. A giant umbul-umbul flag featuring the titular animal was visible over the woven rooftops of the beachfront properties. I put the Birkenstocks back on and walked down a crude track between two buildings, to emerge on a row of bars and restaurants. The music here was louder, less laid-back, some of it full-throated Balinese punk, and each bar had at least one young woman sitting on a stool near the entrance, acting as a come-on.
I dodged one of the ubiquitous offerings laid out along the street – this one coconut leaves, red flowers and what looked like a digestive biscuit – and walked up the two steps and smiled at the Blue Turtle’s stool pigeon, who gave a nod and a greeting of om swastiastu. She was porcelain-faced, almond-eyed, poised and quite beautiful, even with the slight imperfection around her nose, which looked as if it had been broken at some stage in her job at the club. Occupational hazard, I guessed.
There were already a dozen customers at the bamboo tables, ploughing into pitchers of beer. Mostly Western, except for an overweight local in a floral shirt, who was sipping Japanese whisky at the bar, with the bottle left in front of him. His eyes raked over me as I approached the woman behind the counter and asked for a lime-soda.
‘You lonely?’ the guy asked.
‘Do I look lonely?’
He gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Lots of women come to Bali lonely. Lots of men, too.’
I paid for my drink and asked the barkeep: ‘Is Dieter in?’
‘Later,’ said the girl, off-handedly.
The man to my right huffed, shook his head enough to get his jowls wobbling and went back to his whisky. Obviously, he wasn’t interested in women who were interested in Dieter.
I moved along the bar and sat on a rattan stool, sipping my drink slowly, trying to zone out the gap-year stories being shared nearby.
I had to be careful not to gulp, as I tend to when confronted with a non-alcoholic option. I had once experimented with a stomach matrix, which allows you to drink without – in theory – getting drunk. It worked, but I concluded that the pain of expelling a used matrix just wasn’t worth the effort. Best to either not drink, or go for the old pour-in-a-plant-pot trick.
The guy I guessed was Dieter arrived about thirty minutes later. It wasn’t such a shot in the dark. After all, he swaggered in like he owned the place. Which he apparently did. He was whippet-thin, with a mass of black curly hair. Dieter had on cut-off denim jeans and one of those vests with armholes so big, you wonder why they bother. A thick gold chain dangled a Hindu swastika symbol against the wiry hair of his chest. He leaned over one of the tables and whispered into a lad’s ear and they shared a joke. As he slapped the boy on the shoulder, Dieter’s gaze passed over me but didn’t linger. Instead, he went to the fat guy, and they exchanged a hurried conversation. Dieter handed the man something – an envelope, I thought, but I didn’t want to stare long enough to draw attention to myself – and the man slugged back his whisky, slid his lardy arse off the poor stool and left.
Dieter moved behind the bar, mixed himself a drink, then pointed at mine and widened his eyes in the international Esperanto for ‘Another?’ I nodded.
‘Dieter, right?’ I asked as he put the glass before me.
‘Yes,’ he said without a beat. I guessed lots of people were told: Go and see Dieter. He’ll sort you out. Sort you out for what, though? He wiped and then held out his hand. ‘Welcome to the Blue Turtle.’
‘I believe you know my daughter,’ I said as I took his hand. With that, he escaped my grip like a frightened eel. I saw the shutters come down behind his baby-blue eyes.
‘We get a lot of girls in here,’ he said shiftily. His body language couldn’t have been more slippery if he’d bathed in a vat of WD40.
‘Jess. With her father, Matt.’
A look of relief flickered across his face and he relaxed just a little. I wasn’t the kind of mother he feared most, clearly. Well, he might have to reconsider that before I was done.
‘Right.’
I showed him a picture on my phone. ‘This Jess.’
> ‘Yeah.’ His skinny body went all squirmy. I suppressed the urge to slap his slippery face. ‘They passed through here a while back.’
I scrolled through my photos. ‘And this woman? Laura?’
‘Yeah, but she split before he did.’ He put his elbows on the counter top. ‘Look, I don’t know what you want—’
‘He has my daughter. Without my permission.’
His eyebrows went up. ‘Wow.’
‘Yes. Very wow. I’m looking for her. Him, not so much.’
‘Listen, lady—’
‘Sam.’
‘Sam.’ I didn’t like the way my name sounded in his mouth, but I smiled anyway. ‘Your daughter should not be with him. He’s not a nice guy. He skimmed money off the top of my place when he worked here.’ Now his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He dealt drugs. In Bali, I mean, you have to have a death wish. Literally. That guy in here just now? The fat one?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Cop. I have to pay him every week just to stay off my back. If I don’t, next thing I know I’m in Kerobokan sucking some jailer’s dick so I can get tofu with my rice ball. No, thanks. So, we argued about the drugs, Matt and me, and he fucked off.’ He straightened up and took a slurp of his drink, as if he had said too much. ‘Nice kid by the way, Jess. I liked her. You just can’t choose your parents.’
No, but you can choose your partners, I thought. And look at how that turned out for me. ‘Thanks.’
‘Him, I meant. Not you.’
‘Was she OK?’ I asked.
‘Jess? She was fine. I mean, he kept her away from all that. But, you know, if he’d been caught doing what he does, then she would have been in trouble too.’
Now the Big One. ‘Where did they go?’
‘Like he’d tell me. He owed me millions of rupiahs when he skipped. They just upped and went. Off the island, for sure. If you find out, you let me know, eh? I’ll give you a finder’s fee.’
‘Sorry. This one’s personal. Any clues?’
‘Under some rock, somewhere. Sorry, I can’t help. I hope you find her. Drinks are on the house.’
With that, he turned and walked away to check stock.
Game over. Well, for now, I thought.
I put a pile of rupiahs on the bar – I didn’t want his comps – and left, texting Kadek as I did so. I had just pressed send when I heard the shuffle of feet on the lane behind me. ‘Ibu.’
I turned, ready to drop the phone and defend myself if need be. It was the girl from the bar, the one on the stool near the entrance.
‘Ibu, I heard you in there. I knew Jess. My name is Aja. Did she mention me?’
I shook my head. ‘I haven’t heard from her.’
‘We hung out together.’ She looked nervously over her shoulder. ‘Dieter thinks I am on comfort break. You have to be careful.’ She pointed to her misshapen nose. ‘He did this when he thought I went with other man. He mad. Crazy.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault. His.’ She hissed this last word, the sibilance as sharp as a stiletto.
‘And Jess? How was she?’
‘Mostly happy. Sad when the woman left. But lovely girl.’ Another backward glance, as nervous as a chicken with a fox on the prowl. I felt a stab of sympathy for her. I was pretty certain that her hopes and dreams never included being a come-on girl – at the very least – at a bar. ‘I have to go. Meet me here. Later. Eleven. Go to very back.’
She pressed something in my hand.
‘I know where they went. Matt and Jess.’
My words tumbled over each other and collided in the rush to get out of my mouth. But it was no good, she was speed-walking back towards the Blue Turtle as fast as her long legs in a tight skirt could manage.
I unfolded the slip of paper she had given me. One word: Bacang. No address or phone. Was it another bar? Or a street? Or a temple? Go to the very back, she’d said, which suggested a building or business. Kadek would doubtless tell me.
I looked at my watch and did a quick calculation. Four and a bit hours to go. They were going to be the longest four hours of my life. And those words would rattle around my skull for every second.
I know where they went.
TWENTY-ONE
You don’t want to go there.
I awoke with a start, Kadek’s words coming back to me as the fog of sleep lifted. It took half a second to piece together where I was: in my room, under the creaking air conditioning. I had arrived back from the Blue Turtle, showered and lain down to close my eyes. Now it was gone ten.
I cleaned my teeth and recalled showing Kadek the word on the piece of paper.
Bacang.
The young man had recoiled from it.
Bad place, he had said. A bacang was a glutinous rice dumpling filled with meat, he’d explained. Street food. This Bacang, though, was actually located behind a series of stalls selling the buns, noodles and meatballs. It was not a place a nice Ibu like Miss Wylde should go, he’d insisted. And I’d insisted back that I had to be there at eleven.
We’d arranged that he would wait for me outside after he had dropped me off, and I made sure to have him on speed dial. If he got a call from me, he should come in and get me.
But what was Bacang, exactly? I had asked. But he either didn’t know for sure or wouldn’t tell me.
I dressed in a pair of black cotton trousers, flat shoes and a dark-grey T-shirt. I looked in my case and my Ready To Go bag, but there was little I could use for self-protection.
I might not need it. Aja was no threat. But what if it was a set-up by Dieter? What if he had sent her as bait? Although, what would Dieter gain from messing with me? No, I was being paranoid. I was also, I realised, ravenously hungry. I had neglected to eat.
While I waited for Kadek, I went down and ordered a bowl of nasi goreng from the warung next to my hotel. It arrived in an enormous cone, with the egg on top just erupting, sending a stream of yellow lava flowing down the rice slopes. It came with a bowl of pickled vegetables on the side.
I wolfed most of it down in a few minutes and felt my confidence and excitement return as my stomach filled, and the sugar from the temulawak ginger soda hit my blood stream.
Aja knew where Matt and Jess had gone. OK, knowing him, they might have moved on, but it was the first giant step to overtaking them.
The race was on.
I glanced over my shoulder. A cluster of young men, mostly in mirrored sunglasses, were crouched under the dadap trees, sheathed in smoke from their spiced cigarettes. One of them raised a hand.
Driver? it asked.
The men were all drivers of Kijangs, the all-purpose four-door workhorses of Bali tourism, which were parked outside most hotels. I smiled, shook my head and went back to the last few morsels of my meal.
The honk of Kadek’s horn made me jump. I took a final mouthful of soda, debated going back up to clean my teeth again, decided against it and got into the front next to Kadek. He had changed into yet another crisp white shirt and his black hair was oiled and combed.
‘Fifteen, maybe twenty minute to place you want,’ he said. It was as if he couldn’t bring himself to say the name.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Sure?’
‘Let’s go,’ I said forcefully.
‘OK, Ibu.’
We set off, navigating between overloaded mopeds carrying extended families with a skill that would shame one of those army motorcycle display teams my father loved, and a series of semi-skeletal dogs with various death wishes. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. A red-faced Westerner with a glistening forehead and damp, lank hair. I helped myself to one of Kadek’s wet wipes and dragged it over my skin, grimacing as I examined the greasy patch on the tissue.
Paradise certainly came with a lot of pollution.
‘What do you do on your days off?’ I asked Kadek once we were properly under way.
‘Me?’ he asked.
‘Well, not the car. I don’t care what the car does.’<
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He shrugged. ‘I hang out with friends. Play video games. I go to a mixed martial arts gym.’ He looked a little sheepish. ‘Sometimes. Go to cinema.’
‘Favourite films?’
‘Guardians of the Galaxy. The Fast and the Furious.’ A giggle. ‘I like Baby Driver. You see it? I wish I could drive like that. But Bali too crowded.’ As if to make the point, he swerved to avoid a clutch of chickens that were actually crossing the road to get to the other side.
A simple soul, then. And maybe not the best source of information on the subject I was about to broach.
We passed a parade of carvings, gathered at the roadside like a ragtag version of the Terracotta Army.
This was the Foreign Legion equivalent.
There were gods, dragons, birds and, oddly, a fullsized Batman, complete with cape. Within half a mile, they had gone, replaced by shacks selling gaudy bangles, beads and necklaces.
‘What is in the baskets?’ I asked.
‘Which baskets?’
‘At the side of the road. There, look. And there’s a pile on that motorcycle.’ I pointed to a precarious stack of wicker baskets on the back of a moped.
He didn’t have to look. ‘Cockerels. For the cock fights. They are next to road to get used to people. Noise. For when they fight. I don’t like,’ he added hastily. ‘Too much gambling. Too much gangsters.’
I wasn’t sure I believed him. He would know most Westerners are squeamish about such things. But it gave me an opening. ‘Tell me about drugs on Bali, Kadek,’ I said.
His voice quivered with shock. ‘You want drugs? Ibu, that’s not—’
I stopped him before his opinion of me crashed and burned altogether. ‘No, I don’t want drugs. A man I know may have sold them. At least, I think he might have. Isn’t there the death penalty here for drugs?’